


Chipped Front Fender

by Marginson



Series: 1990 Plymouth Voyager [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 18:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14361357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marginson/pseuds/Marginson
Summary: In a modest clinic in a town he doesn't know, Silver meets the resourceful Dr. Howell, comes to terms with his future, and wonders why the man who saved his life still hasn't left.





	Chipped Front Fender

**Author's Note:**

> You probably want to read part 1 before this.

 

Fluorescent lights, and the shrill beeping of a heart monitor.

Silver tries to move his head to look around the room, but he feels terribly heavy, and the effort too great. So he just stares at the grey ceiling.

He doesn’t remember exactly how he got there — his memory stops with him lying on ruined leather seats. A glimpse of the sunset. A shaky voice in his ear.

Logically, he knows his left leg is a broken, torn mess ; the agony of the bullets is still present in his mind. But the pain is not there.  
The pain is not there, and actually, neither is his ever-present anxiety, which is _incredibly_ refreshing. He just woke up alone, wired to a heart monitor in a place he doesn’t know, and yet he does not feel the usual urge to get up and run.  
  
In fact he feels relaxed, almost content. He feels at peace.

Ah.

Ketamine.

 

* * *

 

The next time he wakes up he is in a different room, and it’s a lot darker. There is an empty hospital bed beside his, with a pile of bloody clothes on top. They’re not his.  
Before he can think about calling out a young man in nurse scrubs barges in, takes a short look at him, and immediately storms out.

It’s a shame. He could have used some more of that sweet K.

The young nurse comes in again not two minutes later, followed by an anxious-looking man in a surgeon’s garb who looks, frankly, half dead with exhaustion.

“I’m Dr Howell,” he says, and he sounds mad at Silver for some unknown reason. “Flint brought you here to bleed to death on my parking lot, but he wouldn’t explain anything. What happened ?”

“Who’s Flint ?”

“Christ...he only gave you a codename, is that it ?”

 _Flint_. _The Captain_. Right.

“...Yeah.”

“So what happened ?”

“Not sure you really want to know.”

“Listen. I don’t have the time to tell you about my entire history with him but trust me, I know what he gets up to. And he trusts me to get him, and you, out of this particular mess. I also don’t have absolute power over this clinic, as much as he’d like me to, so I need to know what happened and if I should expect a SWAT team in my ward before tomorrow morning.”  
  
Howell’s tone forbids any protestation. Silver sighs. His head swims, he still feels too heavy to move much, but he feels awake enough.

“We were six people. The Ca...Flint, Rackham, Red, Blade, Arms, and me. Jewelry store. It was going well, and then a cop showed up…”

“Well, you’re lucky he didn’t shoot you in the head. Should I expect the others ?”

“No, I don’t think — we had separate escape routes. I wasn’t even supposed to go with Flint.”

Howell hums.

“What about the police ?”

“Honestly ? I was out for a good part of it, but if they were really on our trail I don’t think we would have made it this far. Have you seen the piece of trash he..."  
  
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Howell interrupts with a wry laugh. “He’s more into German coupés, usually.”

It must be the ketamine, but Silver finds it in himself to laugh too. Howell’s face gets serious again.

“I have some bad news,”he says.

 

* * *

 

It turns out taking four successive bullets to the leg does not leave much that can be repaired. Howell tells him that it was a miracle that he didn’t simply bleed out, and Silver bites his tongue to refrain from telling him that he would have been okay with that, actually, had he had the choice.

But, as it were, Fate and Flint decided otherwise.

There’s urgency in Howell’s voice, and Silver feels very, very tired of dealing with everything, so he eats the bland hospital food, and he signs the papers and answers the questions of the anesthetist who comes in later, and shrugs at the way she grimaces, and then he lets the nurse tie his hair and put caps on his head and feet — God, this is the last time he can think feet, plural — and help him into a wheelchair, and then there’s a short wait on a stretcher in the hallway of the surgery floor with the light hurting his eyes, and then the confined atmosphere of an operating room.

“Shoot me up real good, doc. You know K’s my friend,” he says with a grin to the anesthetist, because he can’t look at the surgeons.

She must smile from behind her mask, because her eyes crinkle, but she sounds a little sad when she answers “Yeah, I got you.”

They put a plastic mask on his face, and he breathes in, and lets himself fall into the whirl of voices and lights and colors, and prays he never comes out.

Then they take his leg.

 

* * *

 

Waking up again is a bitch.

He doesn’t have to open his eyes. The pain is obvious enough, but still he forces himself to sit up and look at his leg. At the dip in the hospital covers.  
His mind is completely blank.

He notices Flint, standing up from a chair in the corner to get to the door.

“Don’t call anyone,” Silver says.

Flint turns and looks at him. He looks angry and confused at the same time.

“Just...give me a minute. Please.”

Surprisingly, Flint stops and sits back in the chair. He’s silent for a moment, fidgeting with his nails. His left arm is in a sling and he’s wearing clothes that are obviously too big for him — pants with too many pockets and a big brown hoodie.

Silver kind of wants to yell at him. Kind of wants to ask him what the fuck he’s still doing there, but he’s not sure how, so he stays silent.

“I found us a safehouse,” Flint says in a small voice.

 

* * *

 

No matter how long Flint argues with Howell in the hallway just outside Silver’s door, the man will not discharge him in the state he's in. It’s common sense, really. Recovery takes time. There is the actual physical healing of his bones and muscles and skin and nerves, there is the gradual decrease of the drugs, there is physical therapy, and so on, and so forth. Silver knows he has to go through all of it.

He just cannot understand why Flint wants to go through it with him.

“You know you can just leave,” Silver tells him when he walks back into the room.

Flint stands in silence, for a minute. Then he sits down on Silver’s bed, very carefully, and his face goes from frustrated to plain tired, just like that.

“You know what? Somehow I don’t think I can.”

 

* * *

 

“Are they… actively looking for us?”

“No — I mean, they can’t identify us, and Rackham made enough of a mess that they’re focusing on him at the moment. But with your leg, we need to lay low for a while.”

“Do you think they’re gonna get him?”

“Rackham? No, the fucker’s in Mexico already.”

 

* * *

 

Silver doesn’t know where Flint sleeps at night after the first few days, exactly. Sometimes he wanders into his room at two in the morning with shitty instant coffee and goes to sit by the window as if he owns the place. No one stops him, apparently. Sometimes he comes in later. He still wears hoodies that are three sizes too big and pants right out of a fishing catalogue.  
  
He barks orders at the nurses when Silver is in too much pain to ask for more painkillers. The nurses bark back. It becomes a thing, almost friendly banter, between Flint and Silver’s nurses. Maybe it carries them all from one day to the next.

He reads to Silver. He gets his hands on random paperbacks and hoards them, building an unsteady pile on the window ledge. Sometimes he gets too absorbed to continue reading out loud, and Silver has to remind him that he was listening.

He holds Silver’s arm when the ketamine wears off and his brain starts registering panic again.

He indulges Silver when he decides that walkers are not something he ever wants to touch unless he is forced to, and helps him walk up and down the hallway when the nurses are gone. He does not try to lecture Silver, just lets him lean on him and swears as they stumble.

He convinces Silver to give the crutch a go, because what if he’s not there to help him escape the next time the clinic’s psychologist comes and tries to make him talk about _things_ again.

He does all that and Silver thinks _why are you still there_.

 

* * *

 

Silver wakes up in the middle of the night of the sixth or seventh day, anxiety clawing at his heart like a wild animal. He can’t go back to sleep.

When Flint arrives he grabs him by the sleeve and does not let him go.  
  
“How am I gonna pay for all of this?” he asks.

Flint smiles, and it startles Silver — jolts something in his chest, something that has nothing to do with anxiety.

“Do you think you were the only thing I loaded into the damn van?”

 

* * *

 

After ten days or so, Howell lets him go with a list of follow-up appointments as long as his arm and a pile of documentation that Flint snatches from him immediately.

They step out into the parking lot. Silver takes one look at the car parked in front of the entrance and starts laughing nervously.

“You fucking _kept it_?!”

“Shut up,” Flint groans, and opens the passenger door.

  
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> ...alright this is officially a 'verse are y'all happy now


End file.
